Rebirth on the Paths of Politics and Business

The Missing Prologue

The weather had just turned cool. After nightfall, a rising breeze chilled the night, which lay like water. The car turned off West Outer Ring Road onto Qingnian Road. For several kilometers south of the Mingcheng Grand Hotel, all the way to Jinyi Lake, streetwalkers could be seen everywhere, casting seductive glances at passing men. Zhang Ke slowed the car, a cigarette dangling from his lips, and watched the women pacing back and forth along the sidewalk after dark. Broad expanses of breasts and thighs, pale as lingering snow, lay exposed beneath the greedy, yellow glow of the streetlights. Beside him, Du Fei grinned and waggled his eyebrows. "You said there were some trans women with incredible figures, too. How can you tell?" Several women gathered around the car, holding up two fingers and waving them insistently. Through the closed windows, the words spilling from their crimson lips were inaudible. Du Fei pressed his face almost against the glass. "Only two hundred yuan a go. Some of them are pretty good-looking, too." "Only if they're the ones paying you..." Zhang Ke said with a laugh. "Fuck you!" Zhang Ke's remark seemed to strike a nerve, and Du Fei exploded. "I'd kept my virginity for half my life, and you were the one who ruined it!" Zhang Ke burst out laughing. Zhang Ke and Du Fei had been classmates for seven years and had always been inseparable friends. After graduation, Zhang Ke had thrown himself into a life of wine, women, and unrestrained debauchery, while Du Fei had remained a virgin right up until his final year of graduate school. This was an age when being a virgin was considered shameful. By his final year of graduate school, Du Fei could no longer stand his virgin status and had asked Zhang Ke to take him to find a prostitute, his pocket stuffed with the five thousand yuan in project funds his adviser had just given him